Welcome back to the QEP Café!
October 2, 2009 by masonqep
We thank the Mason community for helping us establish Fostering a Culture of Student Scholarship and Creative Activity as the focus of our QEP. This blog, the QEP Café, has been reestablished to learn your specific ideas about how we can successfully achieve this.
Over the next year, the QEP Planning Committee will be listening to your ideas and drafting more specific goals and program and assessment activities to be included in our final plan. We hope to have a revised draft ready by fall 2010 for university review and feedback.
We need your ideas – faculty, staff, students, and alumni! – for how best to implement this topic. We encourage you to use this as a space to brainstorm and share ideas about how to engage students and faculty in scholarly and creative activities.
We ask that you provide us with your feedback by Thursday, December 17th, by clicking on the “Share Your Ideas Here!” tab at the top of the page. Please remember that you are also welcome to send your comments and feedback to qep@gmu.edu.
Stay tuned to our website for more information about the SACS accreditation process and for ongoing updates.
Enjoy our café!
The QEP Planning Committee
When we think about what we mean by “a culture of student scholarship”, one of the questions that continues to come up in my mind is how we can foster that culture in ways that are not tied to a course. To say “culture of scholarship” implies something more than work you do for a grade — it’s an outlook on the educational process and what you might get from your years at Mason that transcends individual courses. Because it is expedient and practical to tie scholarship opportunities to courses, my concern is that non-course connected scholarship activities might get pushed aside.
It’s just before dawn in the QEP Cafe this morning. I’m thinking about Mills’s remark and the importance of co-curricular opportunities in supporting a culture of scholarship and creative activity. My “home field advantage” in this part of the conversation comes from 25 years in the arts, where faculty and students routinely engage outside the classroom for long, sustained, and intense encounters with “the thing itself”– a play, a piece of music, a dance work, a visual artifact, a film, etc… in a process that includes ideation, creation, analysis, revision, and judgment at every turn. Yet I have sometimes felt that we don’t do a very good job around reflecting on what we learn each time, or placing the creative/performative act in context. An exemplary exception might be the recent Berlin Wall student gala in which dancers, readers/actors, and musicians collaborated to commemorate the momentous event in 1989; I’m sure the students who performed those works –including the finale of Beethoven’s 9th, with the key word “Freude” (Joy) changed to “Freiheit” (Freedom)– understood them in a different and larger way. There was a sense of “why” added to the customary “what” and “how” that we deal with all the time in our various fields, in and beyond the arts. I would like to challenge the QEP process to help us document, understand, and articulate the aims and values of scholarship and creative activity as part of a liberal education–and to do so in a way that adds to the richness of the student experience by encouraging reflective engagement without becoming a stultifying obligatory exercise. Now… another cup of coffee, please.
I’m in the SPP school and have found the career center to be deficient. To me – scholarship starts outside of the classroom and is about a well-rounded student who is ready to apply what they’ve learned to a real-world setting. Investing resources in career centers also helps raise the value of a degree for alumni and future students. In addition, what’s the point of having a degree if you can’t find a job?
Addtionally, what about marketing? I think employer-outreach is critical… we need to showcase to the local community what Mason students have to offer and perhaps more importantly what our faculty and research centers have to offer. I’ve been to many job interviews and employers in this area do not know anything about our graduate degree programs and the topics that are discussed. Mason needs to do a better job of defining and selling its brand. Other local schools such as GW, Georgetown, Catholic, and American have been very successful with this and part is due to money but I feel it mostly has to do with the fact that their faculty and employees spend more time interacting with the public and private sector.
The most highly-valued attribute in this world is not technical skill, but rather initiative. Unfortunately, the K-12 system tends to suppress initiative in the name of discipline. The most valuable activity in a University would be to foster initiative in all students.
The difficulty with doing so is that inevitably those students who already have most initiative will respond most quickly to any effort along these lines, crowding out those students who are most in need. Another problem is that the faculty in a position to implement such an effort are precisely those who as students themselves had enough initiative to become faculty, so they may have difficulty understanding where the problem lies.
The ‘first penguin’ awards by Randy Pausch sound like a great attempt at such an effort.
I agree with John that initiative is a highly valued trait, but even with initiative, there are barriers that need to be recognized and removed.
One barrier is time. Mills’ point is well taken, and worth repeating: a culture of scholarship has to stretch beyond the limits of a single course and the pursuit of a grade. The QEP needs to find ways to allow students to reserve time to pursue scholarship outside the limits of a classroom.
Another is lack of departmental support. As a student, my primary goal is to get a degree. To get a degree, I have to work within with the expectations of my professors. Many (certainly not all) of my professors discourage collaborating with other departments in GMU in both overt and subtle ways. Therefore the QEP will need to win the support of the professors if you want the culture to change. It may require financial and/or other types of incentives for the professors, and thus departmental support is necessary.
A third is awareness. I love the idea of “creating and nurturing a culture of scholarship, creativity, and research that stretches beyond disciplinary boundaries and permeates Mason.” It’s part of why I returned to full-time student status, in the fascinating multidisciplinary field of public policy. I’m very happy with the program and the wonderful faculty and staff at SPP, yet other than Catherine’s comment above, the QEP doesn’t appear to be on SPP’s radar. If there is another program on campus that should be front and center in cheering for this initiative, I can’t imagine what it would be. So why isn’t SPP engaged? One person I asked told me that the QEP only applied to undergraduates. If that’s true, then that’s a whole different discussion…
There are more barriers, I’m sure, but in contrast to a few of the posters above, I believe the QEP can add tremendous value to a Mason education and enrich the entire community.
It would also be good to give students more opportunities to do research on their own, even while they are taking classes. Perhaps some courses focused primarily on independent student research could be developed, where the class as a whole meets only now and then to discuss research methodology (say, a week at the beginning of the semester and another towards the middle), and then the rest of the time is spent in one-on-one meetings with the faculty member who would guide students’ individual projects. I am imagining something that would be more like tutorials in the British system. In order for this to work, though, the faculty-student ratio would need to be lower. Also, department funding could not be tied to enrollment numbers.
Also, fostering a culture of student scholarship means fostering a culture of faculty scholarship as well. Instructors actively engaged in research and creative activity are more likely to transmit their love of it to students. Faculty need access to more resources for scholarship, including a research budget and study leave, and need more time away from the bureaucratic and administrative demands that are the least enjoyable part of the profession.
What are some implementable incentives that would motivate faculty to do research, scholarly or creative projects with undergraduates?
From a student perspective, the creative process of investigation, implementation, data gathering , analysis and presentation appealed to me, and I sought out research opportunities both at Mason and at other universities.
Other factors include a more competitive resume, a stipend that eased financial concerns during the project duration and reduced distractions such as a part-time job, and the romantic appeal of adding to a greater body of knowledge.
Managing school work and a research or creative project is really hard though, and I wish that students who do take time to engage in above mentioned activities would be given incentives academically (like an automatic A in a class:) And to that you say “Keep dreaming!” but I ask that in all seriousness.
Let’s say I am in a hypothetical class of 200 people. Most of those student are there to get a degree by getting the best grades possible and move on with their lives.
A select few who like doing research, or are aspiring researchers, take the initiative to work on creative projects, such as a research project in their field, being a student organization leader, an event organizer, a performer, etc because they recognize that attending a university is more than getting a degree- it’s about getting an education.
What better way to become an educated citizen of the globalized world than to widen one’s horizons / enrich one’s understanding of a particular field or profession by becoming involved in a scholarly or creative project outside the classroom, applying what one learned as theories inside the classroom, and reaping intangible rewards such as an enriched mind? But as I go forward with such logic, my GPA starts dwindling.
Maybe it’s my poor time management skills, but my dilemma as a student is balancing my GPA with my co-curricular activities. Is there a way the QEP can help students such as myself?
Mrinalini makes a good point. One of the major difficulties associated with scholarship for students outside the classroom is the time/reward structure for both students and faculty. I think some of this can be fixed by offering (pr perhaps requiring) courses in directed research/scholarship. The problem then becomes one of how we reward faculty for teaching these courses.
The financial realities we are facing right now is pushing us toward higher teaching loads where individualized study sections and supervision of graduate students doesn’t count. Although all of us enjoy working directly with students, the cold reality of teaching loads and promotion requirements mean we have to spend time publishing our own work. Although some students can produce publishable work, often undergraduates don’t have the time or ability to make this happen – particularly in a one semester project. Even if they did, we have no institutional support for basic expenses like journal page charges for unfunded research. (I know this is heresy, but some of my best papers came from projects that were not covered by grants from NSF or NASA.)
Perhaps on the most basic level, it is difficult for faculty to get excited about participating in a mentoring when their own institution and bosses says “it doesn’t count.”
Although I am sure there are ways to cut the “fat” at Mason, the reality is we are seriously underfunded to perform even our basic mission. Even a little bit more funding would make a difference in being able to supporting a reward structure for faculty participating in this type of program. Unless we address this financial problem, I am not convinced we can really change the culture.
I would like to begin by echoing Prof JL’s remarks encouraging student research as a keystone in GMU’s pursuit of reaccreditation.
To genuinely develop a thirst for lifelong learning, one of GMU’s core values, I consider encouraging initiative in uncovering and discovering one’s individual research interests (call it curiousity) to be an imperative. Facilitating a reflective pattern by which one develops both appreciation and skill in self-awareness is key to this transformation.
In order to promote this cultural ex/change, first, marketing. I am very sorry that I missed the Berlin Wall gala regaled by Mr. Davis. It’s events such as these which help ALL students get outside of themselves and see more of what GMU has to offer as a rich environment of enlightenment. It would have been brilliant to highlight this event in a number of manners (Twitter, etc.) and then follow-up with either a short-term blog for posting moderated reflections.
Second, to echo, in a different direction than that of Catherine, a GMU deficiency of particular note for the QEP of which I became (sadly) intimately familiar with is the university’s lack of a robust mentoring/tutoring network which is actually focused on research. I struggled, to no avail, about a year ago to find a university resource to aid me in understanding principles of quantitative research in education…and was underwhelmed. In repeating the class this semester, I have found two tutors outside of GMU’s network to ensure I “make the grade.” In this era of social media, GMU could stand to establish an avenue which truly fosters connections of this sort (Ning, FaceBook, etc.).
In support of others’ comments, I would welcome the opportunity to participate in a program which promoted student-research, publication, and presentation – even so far as to pay for it myself!
On many of the points that are taken, a culture change involves commitment by members of the community in order to effect such changes. Policy changes are one of the final long-term outcomes we want to see from the research being done at the other schools, colleges, and centers of the University. All the research that drives changes in global health, transportation modeling, education and health care reform, and climate change (as examples) are probably among the major strengths Mason has in research, and it would be a complete shame if SPP did not feel it had a stake. Indeed, one of the latest newsletter issues from the Council for Undergraduate Research focused on undergraduate research that advocated for policy changes.
Interdisciplinary and intercollegial interactions are absolutely key (in my own opinion) to establish such changes. An example I can bring about is entrepreneurship challenges offered by the NCIIA to faculty and undergraduate innovation and entrepreneurship teams. (Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/theNCIIA for just a few examples when you have time: see the Afghans4Tomorrow and the Greensulate presentation) I also think that interdisciplinary thinking will be the distinction between leaders and innovators from the followers in education and in “the real world.”
I think part of it is an expectation that we change the culture of the classroom from one where students are solely satiated by “getting the grade” to one where the professors’ and faculty’s expectations encourage students to take the initiative and begin to be more engaged in their learning beyond what is taught in the classroom. Discussion circles about math (which I see has happened at Mason) and about biomedical research (I am advisor for the student-run Journal Club for Premed Students) are easily modelable in other majors and are not that much more effort financially or timewise.
Do we need a fiscal stimulus to do research on-campus? I agree it would help tremendously, and I hope that many of our faculty and research office staff are scouring for opportunities with federal stimulus money for education to do that.
By the way, the deadline for the Undergraduate Apprenticeship Program (uap.gmu.edu) is November 15.
I will also note: in addition to the uap.gmu.edu website, you are welcome to subscribe to the Research Scholars at Mason blog (http://gmuresearch.blogspot.com) and become a fan of GMU Undergraduate Research on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/GMU-Undergraduate-Research/134588236453). It would be nice to have a few more followers (I use Twitter eventually to feed into these sites rather than stand-alone accounts).
Picking up on the comments relating to creating a culture of undergraduate research and creative work that transcends individual project or course parameters, I think we have a number of models (which we discussed a little in the QEP meeting on November 11) that might help us to do so.
First, as an institution, as faculty and as students, we have access to information and communication technologies that would allow large-scale, collaborative, distributed research projects to thrive on the mason campus and in our communities beyond, if we can design such projects and manage to support the distributed researchers (students) in appropriate ways. Yochai Benkler, in the Wealth of Networks, for example, talks about some such projects, and many more thrive elsewhere. Large parts of the data research and entry for the Aberdeen Ships Project in Scotland, for example, is conducted by amateur researchers working in libraries, in archives and at home, all linked via the internet.
I think we would have to make sure that, as some theorist of digital labor worry, we weren’t exploiting the distributed researchers (our digital labor), but the untapped capacity on our campus would help so many researchers.
Also, when we are thinking about undergraduate research and creative work, we also ought to think of building partnerships with organizations outside the campus who often desperately need dedicated research help. The application of action research methodologies would allow groups of student to research for an organization say, for one semester, or one academic year, then draw up a possible action plan for the next year’s research, and pass that on to the next group of student researchers collaborating with the organization. Collections of oral histories, too, might be nurtured and established this way, too.
Next, I think distributed research projects might enhance our abilities to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning. For example, I can imagine SoTL project assessing the impact of the QEP which could access a very large tranche of the university’s faculty and students through the integration of student researchers, perhaps drawn from the classes and learning communities of those faculty interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
For example, during the preparation for the QEP, one might ask students and faculty a very basic series of questions about what they knew about the QEP, its significance, etc. (administered by trained students who enter responses into a mobile-device-friendly response sheet). and then one might repeat the process the following year to gain an institutional picture of the QEP’s progress, and so on. Again, it should be very possible to create an online consent form for such research, again administered via a mobile device, for such a project. this is only a very general outline, of course, of how one might organize such project, and I know it would be more complex than this sounds. But, I do believe it would be possible and valuable to think of institutional research in this way.
Finally, we might also integrate student researchers more thoroughly into assessment and institutional policy making: Carmen Werder has completed excellent work in this area: here’s an early report:http://doit.gmu.edu//inventio/issues/Spring_2002/Bulcroft_1.html
and I have since heard her talk about subsequent activities in this field. There’s also a nifty short article in Innovative Higher Education, entitled “Weaving Together Undergraduate Research, Mentoring of Junior Faculty, and Assessment: The Case of an Interdisciplinary Program” which indicates, on a small scale, how one might capitalize on the ripples from undergraduate research to address other critical issues on campus.
Really finally, and this is just a quick thought to generate more feedback from our students, perhaps it might be possible to encourage faculty to devote class time to helping students think about the QEP, and to post their ideas to the Cafe before 17th December?
In a recent meeting, our Smithsonian Institution colleagues expressed interest in getting student help in studying their extensive collections. This could well be a tremendous resource in a number of fields as faculty look for new ways to integrate research into undergraduate classes.
All of the comments have been very thought-provoking. I am fond of the reoccurring theme of “stretch[ing] beyond the limits of a single course and the pursuit of a grade.” Student scholarship can be nurtured as part of an internship to further develop research skills. Students get to work with data sets to learn analytical techniques for quantitative and qualitative research. They may or may not get credit for these these internships. but they are prepared to more fully engage in scholarship–examining, understanding and generating it. I find that preparing students for scholarship is often forgotten about, and that they get thrown in to a grad course that they are sinking more than swimming through.
As a department chair, I’d like especially to put in a word for recognizing the importance of department-level plans. There are a couple reasons for this: first, to some degree learning is local; a plan implemented at too high a level may not serve some departments well. Second, for there to be faculty buy-in, there needs to be faculty participation. And faculty are used to working through their departments; it’s a process they can follow and are used to. (And it’s often a successful process, I’m happy to say.)
My suggestions, then, are twofold. 1) Before discussing particular plans, consider the ways any plans are best mapped through the university. 2) Recognize the importance of interdisciplinarity and university-wide programs, but also make sure there is explicit room in the QEP for department-initiated plans.
I received two undergraduate research grants at the University of Mary Washington-It’s a great way for the university to encourage students to stretch beyond classwork. Students who receive grants must first be granted an individual study which they plan with their advisor. These courses must obtain University approval. Once the study is approved, the student is eligible to apply for a grant. If a research grant is received, the student is obligated to participate in the research forum- a campus wide day in which students present their work to faculty, students and administrators. Grants encourage or stimulate the student to push further and the Forums and Research and Creativity Day presentations educate and inspire future grantees.
From their website: http://www.umw.edu/cas/acaffairs/undergraduate/guidelines_for_undergradua/default.php
http://www.umw.edu/cas/acaffairs/randc_day/documents/Creativity_Day_Prgrm08_Abst_Sched_006.pdf
Reasons for engaging in undergraduate research
Undergraduate research projects help students to:
Develop close, mentoring relationships with a faculty member who serves as sponsor of the research project
Clarify academic interests and career goals
Build skills in research, analysis, problem solving, writing, and presentation
Establish credentials for graduate or professional school applications, or for future employment
Contribute to the building of knowledge in the academic field in which the research project is conducted
I would like to see plans coming from departments rather than individuals. I have several faculty working on projects that could be adapted for great QEP plans. I would strongly suggest that you solicit plans from departments.